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Google Checkout disabled – Not available with these items

I was recently asked for help on a Google Checkout problem where the Google Checkout Button on the Magento cart page was disabled with a message saying: “Not available with these items“.

I had a look at the Magento store in question and found a few clues to go on but a
Google search on the subject proved to be of little help unfortunately. The button looks like the one shown in the screenshot below:

The disabled Google Checkout button on the Magento cart/checkout screen. It looks like the normal one only greyed out.
The disabled Google Checkout button on the Magento cart/checkout screen. It looks like the normal one only greyed out.

The underlying URL for the button is:

 <img src="https://checkout.google.com/buttons/checkout.gif?merchant_id=5677186919&amp;w=180&amp;h=46&amp;style=white&amp;variant=disabled&amp;loc=en_US" alt="Fast checkout through Google" />

The big clue was the parameter on the Google Checkout button image URL on the problem store. It had variant=disabled which is generated server side, and so had to be coming from somewhere within Magento. A big fat grep over the code uncovered a variant=' string fragment in Link.php.

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Magento Parade – A Magento Design Showcase

I have recently put together a simple little Magento review and design showcase site called Magento Parade. It’s a chance for Magento designers and developers to check out stunning stores and get inspiration. For designers and developers with innovative ecommerce stores it’s a great chance to get some feedback on your stores and see how they are rated by your peers.

Screenshot from Magento Parade

I’ll be periodically adding a review and seeking feedback from other developers and designers. If you have a magento store you think is pretty special then suggest your store for review in the showcase.

I’m also really keen to try and find some guest reviewers to offer their expert feedback on the showcase stores. If you have specialty knowledge in ecommerce SEO, or web marketing and would be keen to offer some tips or advice, please get in touch with me to discuss.

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5 Free Professional Magento Installations

The first 5 Magento Installations I do will be free! Whats the catch? You have to provide me a review of the work I do and my professional service in general that I can put on my blog for others to see. Simple eh?

I’ve decided to start offering Professional Magento Installations as a service, there is high demand for a well installed Magento. All too many people with not quite enough knowledge or skills are having a go at it then ending up with failed installations. I have helped a number of people on the Magento forums who for a small fee could have saved themselves hours of headaches and had the work done quickly by a professional.

My standard price will be $99, I see that Magento themselves charge $149 – so naturally I wanted to make my Magento Installation cheaper without cutting back on quality or timeliness. I will often be able to install same day, and usually install within 2 days.

Of course the price is ZERO right now for a limited time I’ll install your Magento for FREE, so if you are contemplating it, get in touch with me.

Because I haven’t offered any professional service on this blog before I thought I’d offer to do the first 5 Magento Installations free of charge to get some references from happy customers! So if you want your Magento installed for you by an expert, check out my professional services page. Be in quick, I’m sure this won’t last.

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How to install MAMP on your Leopard Mac

I’m writing a full series on setting up your Mac for Magnto ecommerce development, I should probably start with the first step – installing MAMP on a Leopard Mac, even if it’s a quite basic and hopefully self evident.

Maybe one of the less obvious things is that you do not need MAMP pro to get virtual hosting set up in Apache on a Mac, but it will require you to work with Apache config files as described in my post on setting up virtual hosts in apache on MAMP.

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How to set up Apache Virtual hosting on MAMP for Magento

When developing and testing a production Magento store locally it’s easy and convenient to set up an exact replica of the production environment. This can be achieved using Apache virtual hosting and your operating system hosts file.

This post will walk you through setting up a local testing Magento install for MAMP Leopard to include a virtual hosting configuration and how to configure your operating system to send requests for  your production site to your local testing environment.

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